Passport stuck? RTI is the way out, not 'contacts'

Usually, people employ 'approach' when faced with tricky government work. Tell them that while 'source' may or may not work, RTI will most certainly will.

This is what happened in case of Deepti Gairola. An MBA student, she was as uncertain about getting her passport. When intervention of the influential person too failed to get the job done, RTI came to her rescue.

Whilst a student of Banasthali Vidyapith, Rajasthan, she had applied for a passport. Police verification was over and she was waiting for the passport to arrive at her residence in Dehradun. But there was an inordinate delay.

After waiting for a couple of months, it became apparent that her application was stuck. As she was in Rajasthan, attending college, her father Pradeep Kumar Gairola started making efforts to ensure they get the passport. The family asked a relative working with the Intelligence Bureau and a correspondent of a major Hindi daily to intervene. Nothing came out of it.

Mr Gairola then wrote a letter to the Bareily office (as Dehradun did not have a passport office then and all passport requests from the city were handled in Bareily office). He did not receive a response. He wrote another letter, waited for a few months, still no response. Another letter, no response.